Stormont has needlessly made a decision to extend lockdown before today’s Cobra meeting in London

Professor Samuel McConkey called for co-ordination of policy with regard to tackling coronavirus.

It is one thing to co-operate between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but quite another to co-ordinate policy.

It is essential that the Province instead co-ordinates policy closely with the rest of the extraordinary National Health Service, one of the key benefits of being in the UK.

Why are the BBC not finding and airing such voices? Is it that the many local medical experts who know this about the importance of NI being closely linked into the UK firepower, networks and expertise in health are too timid to say so?

If so, they are allowing by default an impression to linger that there is something defective in Northern Ireland’s health system not being more closely integrated to the health system of our neighbouring jurisdiction.

The BBC, while it was reporting yet another call for an all-island approach to coronavirus, did not observe the fact that Stormont’s decision to extended lockdown in NI was made before today’s London meeting of the emergency body Cobra. It merely told us that the decision had been inevitable.

Yet making the extension announcement in advance gives the impression of divorcing NI’s response from that of Great Britain, as is the determined goal of Sinn Fein.

It is likely that London will also announce lockdown extension today but that is not the point. Our education system is a UK one so it makes sense for our schools policy to be the same as in Great Britain.

Denmark has reopened its schools and France and Germany will do so in early May.

Yet the Stormont executive did not mention the prospect of school openings, which seem increasingly likely before the summer.

This again raises the concern that Sinn Fein will only let schools return in tandem with the Republic.